Ioana
by Assimbya
Summary: AU. Dracula pursues the wife he once lost, but the process of winning her may prove more difficult than he expects. A dark subversion of the ubiquitous "Mina as Dracula's reincarnated soulmate" plotline. Warnings for partner abuse, sexual assault, and discussion of suicide.


Mina was too young and she remembered too much. The memories came to her in flashes, devoid of meaning or context - heavy fabric over her shoulders, bright pennants fluttering in the breeze, the high screech of a falcon. Once, as a young girl, she was suddenly struck with the sensation of a squirming child in her arms, and she nearly cried out in her surprise. Sometimes, she could not even put a name to what she was experiencing, like the time when, standing in a field at the height of summer, a rich, sweet smell filled her nostrils and made her feel faint. There were moments when her body felt starkly, unmistakably _wrong - _she touched her hair and felt it to be too light in color, too curling in texture, and ran her fingers over her face in an attempt to understand the shape of her nose, the contours of her cheekbones.

But it was nothing. She was an awkward girl with an active imagination, uncomfortable in her own skin. She set her mind to work, filled it up with so many facts and figures that the distorted flashes of recollection were nothing but bubbles bursting against the keen edge of her focus. She studied French and Latin and mathematics, staining her strong brown fingers with ink. When she looked at her hands, she knew that they were her own, and that they belonged in no other time than this one.

Mina fell in love when she was eighteen years old, and when Jonathan held her in his arms the uneasy surging of her mind went still and she listened to the sound of his breath.

Vlad Dracula is half a millennium old and he remembers everything. His mind is an endless accounting of his triumphs and injuries, his descendants and ancestors. He knows very well that there is no one else in the world who remembers the stories of his family, and that little more than his own narrow body and moldering library stands between them and oblivion. He can read his life upon his skin, solid and undecayed by time or mortality - there, on his shoulder is a deep, curved scar made by a Turkish blade, and on his back are marked the signs of his father's reluctant pact with the sultan.

His wives do not remember so fully. Perhaps it is simply that they have little to remember; he took each of them young, and since their deaths he has, as is proper, kept them safe within his walls. Their lives as mortals were women's lives, marked not by battles and treaties but by births and marriages and hours spent kneading bread. Even Adria, who he stole from within a royal court, remembers little but pageantry and embroidery patterns. When they are in his good graces he shares his own memories with them, teaches them to read the histories with which his library is filled, but it is not the same, and no words can give to them the clamor of the battlefield or the frantic tension of his reign. He is not discontented with the solitude of his immortality; he is a different man now than he was as a general and prince, when the independence of his country and the preservation of his lineage were of vital importance to him. He has learned, now, that his lineage has meaning even within his own skin, and that he may choose to exercise only those prerogatives of kingship which bring him pleasure.

And yet, he thinks still of the lovers of his mortality, now lost to him - the companion fallen beside him in battle, the wife dead too young. He imagines coming to them as he is now, pouring his blood into their slack mouths and keeping them forever with him, safe from the treacheries of time, mirrors to reflect back his own memories. He loves his wives, with whom he has shared centuries, but his old losses still rankle him, bitter and catching in his throat.

_Ioana. _

She was asleep, or she thought she was. Somehow, it was as though she could see through her own eyelids, to the bedroom and Lucy lying beside her, her braid of golden hair falling across the pillow, but yet her body was held still, weighted with sleep. The voice filled her up, reverberating through her skull and bones.

_Ioana, come to me._

She tried to speak, but could not move her mouth, and answered within her own mind. "Who are you?"

_Do you not remember me, beloved? It has been so long, after all, and human memory is weak. I am your lord, your husband._

"My name is Mina," she told the voice, "and I remember nothing. Why are you speaking to me? I believe you must have mistaken me for someone else."

_I could never have mistaken you. Perhaps it is difficult for you to think back so far; perhaps you have had to put aside your memories of late, trapped as you are within this life. Invite me in, and I will show you the truth of what I say._

She felt sick and confused, and her mind was stirring as though roiled up by wind. She did not want, even held safe within her dream, to know what it was that he would show her. "No! I don't know who you are and I don't know what it is you're talking about. Leave me alone."

_You cannot deny me, Ioana - you are mine. You swore such, many years since, and such oaths cannot be renounced. Let me in._

Mina knew, somehow, that it would be so easily to do as he asked - she would need only to relax her mind, and open herself to the sound of his voice. Part of her wanted to do so, as though to obey him would be to follow some known, familiar pattern of behavior, one which would keep her safe. But there was danger in this, danger in the strange, foreign name he called her, danger in the fact that anyone could speak to her with such assumed intimacy.

"I don't understand what you're saying, and I have no obligation to you. Let me rest."

_You know very well how I deal with oath-breakers._

The heavy, sweet smell caught her up, and in a terror which she did not understand she found herself crying out. "I am not lying to you!"

Silence for a moment, and then the voice returned, tinted with grim pleasure. _You do remember._

"I don't know what you're talking about."

_You did well, then; you behaved with courage and fortitude, as best you could with the information you had been given. I was proud of you, and you need not fear my displeasure now. But I need you to invite me in, or else I cannot come to you._

"I will not invite you in. You are a stranger to me; you make incomprehensible claims. If this dream is meant to tell me something, then I do not understand it."

_Do you need me to force you? I can do that, if you wish; I can make this process a great deal more unpleasant for the both of us. But I will not let you go. Who is this girl you sleep besides? Would it pain you to see her injured, taken from you?_

She could not speak; she was too terrified. None of the words which came to her mind - forgive her; she is only a girl; she has done nothing to harm you; she acted out of ignorance - made any sense. Lucy - remember who it was that they spoke of. Lucy.

_She is nothing. The pleasure that I can give her would be more than worth the half-century of monotony that I would be taking. And she is beautiful. But I will spare her, if you will come to me._

He had said not a single thing would could be translated into a real threat with implications outside of the space of her dream, but yet she felt so much fear. She understood nothing.

_Take a few days to consider, and to sort through your memory. And after that, if you maintain your resistance, know always that a single word can end her suffering._

He was gone, and the night was still, and Mina slept, restlessly.

He could not have expected her to remember immediately. It had been centuries, and in all his reading he had not been able to learn with certainty how much knowledge a soul could retain. Yet he had hoped that she might retain her sense of obligation, the loyalty which had been branded into her with her marriage vows. And that she had, somewhere - he could feel her soul fighting to obey him, even as her mind resisted - but it was layered over with propriety and worry and some foolish image she had created of herself in his absence. It would take work to strip those layers away, to bring her back to him as he once had known her, radiant in his love.

To entrap both Jonathan and Lucy is a pleasure, for their necks are soft and their terror is sweet, but the greatest joy in taking them comes from knowing how with each draught of their blood he brings himself closer to Ioana, reaching for the heart that she has concealed beneath ink and paper. His bride. How great her exaltation will be, when she is his again, when she recalls who she is and to whom she belongs. Alone in his coffin, with the ocean surging beneath him, he imagines her body as he once knew it, stretched beneath his own in the torchlight. That will have changed, he knows - indeed, her face is so different now that he could not recognize her in the locket which Jonathan carried - but he cannot imagine that her desires have been so altered. He still remembers all the places on her skin which made her gasp in pleasure or cry out in pain. Lust for her thrums like a heartbeat.

The most difficult thing, Mina thought, was that there was nothing she could _do. _She researched as best she could, within the limited resources accessible to her at Whitby - indeed, Mrs. Westenra had quite a collection of books on astral projection and ghostly visions and the symbolism of dreams - but nothing that she read seemed to bear the slightest resemblance to her own dreams, or to the voice that she heard within them. And, once Lucy had teased her several times for reading such absurd texts after she herself had teased Lucy for her own superstitions, Mina put them aside, embarrassed at her vague fears.

More carefully, when Lucy was out and there was no one to look over her shoulder and ask what her pages of shorthand might read, she wrote down everything she could remember of the words she had heard, and of the flashes of recollection which had plagued her since childhood. She looked over the lists, searching for some sort of meaning or narrative that she could read within them, but they seemed to fall apart in her hands.

And then, as the weeks wore on, Lucy grew sicker and sicker, and the doctors were puzzled, and Mina remembered the words which she had heard in her dream, _know always that a single word can end her suffering._

She knew what that word was that he wanted to hear, clearly as if it was written on the sky on the earth and the sea - _yes. _Only that simple acquiescence; such a small thing. But the dreams might so easily mean nothing. And if they were real, then how could she know what she might be acquiescing to?

Ioana, he called her. Who was Ioana, and how might she differ from the self which Mina thought she knew?

"Ioana."

She turned her face away from him, half drunk with sleep. "My lord? You smell like blood."

He eased himself down beside her, reaching to caress her smooth cheek, her glossy hair. "I am a warrior, dearest; of course I smell like blood. Are you well?"

For a moment she shuddered, perhaps at the lingering scent of his hands, but then she turned back towards him, leaning into his touch. "My father sent a herald with congratulations on the pregnancy. I wish that you had not told everyone of it so early - so much could still go wrong, and I would not like to hear what all of them would say if I miscarried. My nurse told me that first pregnancies very often miscarry, and in these early months -"

"You will not miscarry," he cut her off, his tone unequivocal. "You are a strong, healthy woman and there is no reason why our child should not be so as well. The people should know that we will soon have an heir to rule after me; such things bring them hope after so many years of tumult."

"Of course," she was more attentive now; she had woken more fully, "your judgment is correct, my lord. I am sorry for questioning you."

He kissed her, pressing her elbows down into the mattress. Desire stirred in him.

"If you would permit me to mention it," she spoke slowly and quietly, as though careful not to rouse his displeasure, "Maria came to to see me today."

The shift of his focus was sudden and complete. "I had instructed her not to trouble you further."

She shook her head quickly, "No, I do not mind speaking with her. She says that you have not come to her in some time, and she fears she is losing your favor."

"So she entreats you to curry favor with me on her behalf? She should know better than to try such tricks and think that they will bring her anything but contempt. I will punish her for this, the next time that I see her."

"Please do not, my lord, she meant nothing by it. You know that she is dependent upon your goodwill now, that her family would not take her back again if you should cast her off." She hesitated for a moment, feeling his breath hot against her face. "If it would not trouble you, I might take her as one of my ladies. That way, she might be provided for, and be close to you as well. It would be better for her than living at the edge of the city."

He smiled, an odd look on his face. "There are few wives who would be so charitable to their husband's mistress."

Ioana swallowed. "She is a good woman, and she cares for you, as I do. I wish her only the best."

Vlad laughed. "Very well. Then she shall live with us, and thus be rewarded for the kind of flattery for which I generally punish petitioners. But take care, Ioana - there are many who would seek a path to my ear by imposing upon your good graces, and you are too kind for a voivode's wife. Much more of this, and I shall keep you in your chambers, as the Russian Tsars do with their women. Particularly during your pregnancy, when you should not be troubled with such concerns as these."

"Thank you," she told him, "I understand." And she lifted her chin to let him kiss her neck.

_Do you remember our wedding night, Ioana? I shall tell it to you again, so that you might learn the shape of your life anew. We had already made our oaths before god and man, but there, in the privacy of our bedchamber, we swore oaths to one another, you pledging your obedience to me, and I pledging my care and protection to you. I remember you kneeling before me in your shift, your white neck visible beneath the fall of your hair. You were frightened of me; you had never been touched before, and had heard the tales of cruelty, of my brutal execution of the boyars. Although your father was not among them, you told me later that many of the men who died that night had been frequent visitors to your home, had sat you on their knee and given you sweetmeats as a child. You did not yet see my vision, the new nation I was creating, empty of such gluttonous misers. But, despite your fear, you gave yourself over to me willingly, in body and soul. I was overcome with your beauty._

_You must feel desire thinking of it, even now. Your Jonathan cannot pleasure you as I have, and even if he should recover from this illness he will never be able to give you what I know that you need. For you would never bring yourself to ask for it, would you? You could not when I knew you, and I cannot imagine that you would now be able to ask Jonathan for those things which made you blush when I did them, even as you became aroused. He is a handsome man. If you were more cooperative I might be willing to let you have him as well, keeping him in my castle as our joint plaything. But you have neglected your obligations, and I see that it will be necessary to bind you again to me and me alone, until you recall the obedience you once swore. Remember, Ioana, that the longer you keep me waiting the crueler I shall be when I do take you back again. You know how I treat those who betray me._

The words came out as a scream. "It is the man himself!"

Mina felt Jonathan's body shaking in her arms, trembling as though he was overcome with fever. She followed his gaze, and when her eyes lit upon the object of his fear she felt as though his trembling had spread to her, contagious. Her first thought was, senselessly, _he has not changed._ But he had, she realized - his hair was shorter, and he was older than she had ever seen him. There was a scar upon his forehead which she did not recognize, though of course it was hardly surprising that he might have acquired another -

What was she thinking?

"I believe it is the Count, but he has grown young. My god, if this be so! Oh, my god! If I only knew!"

Pieces turned and shifted in Mina's thoughts, confounding her, but there was nothing she could do but lead Jonathan away and attempt to quiet him. There was too much that she did not know. But she turned over in her mind all that she knew of Jonathan's Count, matching it against her memories. Dracula. Dracula. What did that name resemble?

_My Ioana. Come to me._

She would not come to him willingly. He learned that, as the weeks passed and he watched her fitting her evidence together, linking up Jonathan's diary with the Professor's words and her own memories. Each new piece of information seemed to only strengthen her resolve, as her fingers fluttered upon the typewriter keys and she pressed her lips together in distaste. But yet she did not tell her companions of her suspicions, or of the words he had spoken to her as she slept. That, at least, was to his advantage, for all that she showed no further softening towards him.

He had to take her, then. It was the appropriate method, as he well knew - he had used it many times in the past. But he had scrupled to use such force with Ioana, to wholly break her will with terror. It was foolish of him, unforgivably so, and he felt frustration with himself for having allowed sentiment to cloud his judgment for so long. He knew that Ioana was not frail, that once she had borne his punishments with strength and had emerged from them with her devotion to him renewed. His other wives had endured such violence as Ioana now required, and she deserved commensurate treatment from him.

And instead he had sought to use her friends against her, when a moment of clear thought would have told him that such a method could not succeed. He had not made such a grievous error in centuries.

He allowed himself one final indulgence, and came to her the first two times while she slept, keeping her unconscious as he drank from her. That too was a question of sentiment, but he did not want to see his Ioana sobbing and struggling against him on the first occasion that he touched her since her death. It was easier to enjoy the sweetness of her blood as she lay in peace, her head resting against his shoulder. The violence which he intended next was for her sake, but this was for him, these stolen moments of joy, her beautiful body soft and yielding. He knew that it would be a long time still before she would willingly submit to him in full consciousness.

As he left her bedchamber, grief assailed him, and he could not quiet it. It hurt him still, the memory of her death, more than he had ever wished to acknowledge.

She was drawing up plans for the household when he interrupted her. It had been a poor harvest, and they had to be careful with how they apportioned food through the coming winter. It was her task, as the mistress of the house, to be sure that all within their care were sufficiently provided for.

But all her intent focus vanished at the rage on his face. Before she could ask him what was wrong, he strode to her chair and pulled her to her feet, his fingers pressing hard into her shoulders. "I have tried," he said, "to keep you insulated from my more unsavory duties. I have had executions performed far from your sight or hearing. But when treachery invades our very home, I cannot do so anymore. You must learn what I do to protect our land, Ioana. And you will begin now."

"Of course," she told him, "I will learn whatever you want me to." But he was not listening. She could not tell whether or not he was going to beat her; her husband rarely struck her in anger, choosing rather to calm himself before punishing her faults, but his anger at that moment seemed strange, difficult to parse. She could not judge what he might do.

"Come with me." He led her out of her chamber, through the halls of the castle, to a room where, to her horror, she saw Maria curled up, naked, in the center of a bed, her shoulders shaking with sobs. There were guards in the room, too many, crowding it. Their expressions were impassive, as though whatever was going on was as familiar to them as it was unfamiliar to Ioana.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"You are not going to enjoy this," he said, as though in answer, "but you must watch. Know that if you attempt to interfere, or to leave the room, I will have my men restrain you, though I would not like to subject you to that indignity."

He might like to think that he had insulated her, but Ioana knew what her husband did during the days, when he came home reeking with blood and death. And now - "What has she done?" her voice sounded high, frantic to her own ears.

Vlad was not even looking at Maria; he was looking at Ioana, as though this whole scene was meant as some kind of lesson for her benefit. "She has lied to me, for the sake of her own greed, telling me that she was pregnant when she knew herself not to be. Lying is commensurate to betrayal, and for that I have only one punishment."

Terror rose up in her. "My lord, she is only a girl! She wanted nothing but to make you happy, can you not forgive that?"

"Ah, then you knew of what she planned to say to me?"

Ioana did not want to speak of this before strangers, but she had no choice. "She mentioned to me that she was not sure, that she hoped she might be and thought it might please you if she was. I told her to wait to tell you until she was certain, but - please, you know she intended no harm!"

"I am disappointed with you, to defend her so when I have already made my judgment. Be silent now; watch, and contemplate how you yourself might avoid similar faults."

There was a knife waiting for him, sharpened and ready. Two of the guards took hold of Maria's hands and feet and, at his direction, held her down before him, her abdomen bared. Ioana was silent. Ioana despised herself for her silence.

She must tell the others. The certainty was heavy in her, and the thought of the kind of danger which she put them in by remaining silent was a great terror to her. But what could she tell them? Dreams only, and fancies which might make her appear as mad as poor Renfield. For what indeed was she proposing was the case? That the same monstrous Count Dracula who had murdered Lucy and terrorized her dear Jonathan had been speaking intimately within her mind each night for weeks on end? And, worse even than that, that he had somehow spoken _truth _to her in those nightly conversations, that he had some knowledge of the most secret and uncertain parts of her mind, that he held a strange, centuries-old claim upon her soul? That he had once known her under another name, in another body, during a life in which she was his wife and he her husband?

If it were false, than she shuddered to think what it might mean about the stability of her own mind. If it were true, then she would be unspeakably ashamed before Jonathan at the fact that she experienced such intimacies with the man who had so horribly tormented him.

As a child, she had considered her memory flashes to be nothing more than brief daydreams, or disturbances in her perception. Occasionally they had frightened her, but she had generally been able to shake them aside and return her focus to the present. But they had been different of late. She saw more terrifying things, bloody knives and screaming women and a high cliff which seemed to extend into darkness. It was harder to push the sounds and images aside. This she would have attributed to the stress of the past several months, to Lucy and Jonathan's plights, were it not for the voice, and the name he called her. It was harder for her to explain that away.

Sometimes memories came to her which made her feel more ashamed, memories of being intimately touched and touching another. Though she could not clearly see the face of the man in the memories, she knew that he was not Jonathan, and she hated her body's involuntary arousal at these images. She feared what the voice (the Count's?) might say if he knew of them, and of her response.

Often, she prayed. Mina's faith was strong, and could not be shaken even by these experiences, which it could not explain, but she prayed for fortitude, for relief, for the clarity to understand the truth of what she saw and heard and to know what course of action she ought to take.

If her suspicions were true, she could not imagine how the church with which she had grown up might accommodate them. Mina could not think of a reason why God might choose to send her soul into a new body rather than bringing it to judgment but she felt vaguely, uneasily, that she must have done something deeply wrong to merit that fate, that it had been somehow the result of her own actions. But she could not think of what that act might have been - it was a though she beat against a wall every time she tried to imagine it.

Her other fear, which she rarely dared to articulate even within her own mind, was that the Count was right, and that she was in some way bound to him forever, that any choice she might make to resist him would be ultimately futile, evaporating into the air.

He found Ioana praying on her knees before an icon, and had to call her name several times before she would respond. When she did turn to look at him, he saw that she had been weeping.

Vlad knelt beside her, and placed a hand upon her shoulder-blades. With a sigh, she let her head fall upon his shoulder. "The war is going badly," she said. He could not tell whether or not it was a question.

He would not lie to her, in any case. "The Turks are strong, and the force they command is tremendous. I fear the response that Radu has received - there are too many cowards among our people who see only the Draculea blood in him and not his decades of treachery against us. I must go out in the field myself, soon. When they see me in battle, the men may take heart, and the Turks turn in fear."

For a moment she did not speak. And then, as though, choosing her words carefully, "I have heard stories -"

"Ioana, what have you heard?"

Each word seemed to take her a great deal of effort to speak. "There are those who say that, as your wife, I am spoken of among the enemies. That they make….threats of what they might do to me, should they conquer us. That Radu and the sultan -"

He could not bear to hear more. It was strange, how he could watch men in their death throes without flinching, but yet her tentative, tearful description of her fears was too much for him. "Such threats are always made in war, my beloved, and much dishonor is done to the wives of the conquered. I will do what I can to protect you; that is my oath, always, and I honor it. But the enemy is strong. I cannot know that I will always be here to keep you safe."

She nodded. "I understand. And your first obligation is to our people. But I don't think I could endure it, not the dishonor, or to bring shame upon you, to _betray _you -" Her voice broke.

He felt a heavy solemnity upon him. What she was asking, however allusively, was a weighty thing. What he told her must be truth. "You must do what you feel you can endure." He did not look into her face as he spoke; he could not. "If you are presented with a humiliation that your soul will not survive, then to end your life would not shame the Lord. It would be as the courage of a warrior who enters into a battle knowing that he will not leave it alive."

"It is said to be damnation -"

"Priests are fools, my love - you know that as well as I. Such dictates are not made for times as the ones we live in."

He heard her exhale. "You have eased my soul more than I can say. My lord, thank you."

Vlad helped her to her feet. "Come to bed now. I want to touch your skin as often as I can before I leave for battle."

She woke choking on mist, and sat up in bed, bracing herself against the mattress. Jonathan was beside her, still, untroubled in sleep. She touched his hair to reassure herself, feeling it soft against her fingers. She was alive. She was here. No rapacious armies crowded outside her doorstep.

Red eyes in the dark. She reached for the gas lamp. The mist cleared. He stood there, before her, with his narrow limbs and pale skin.

"Silence," he commanded quietly, "if you cry out I shall dash his brains out before your eyes."

Mina's breath caught in her throat; she wanted to weep, with fear and relief and a sorrow that she did not understand. "My lord -" she began, and did not know where the words had come from, felt horror at the honorific which slipped so easily off her tongue.

He smiled, distantly. "Ioana. You have been resisting me for so long."

"You are -" she tried to breathe, "you are the Count, you are the one who killed Lucy, and kept Jonathan -"

"I have kept that no secret; I told you what I would do to her. It is your own fault that you chose to ignore me." He stepped towards her. "But the time for that is finished. I have come to take what is mine, and you may fight me to your own pleasure. I assure you, it will do little good."

He was the same man; although she might inhabit a different body now, his was the same one to which she had once been wed. She had held his hands, kissed his lips. God forgive her, she had borne him a child. But now - but now she was not the same woman she had been. She had a different body, and a different husband, and he was a monster.

She did not think her words would move him, not if he would kill Lucy simply because she ignored his voice in her mind. She thought of Jonathan, lying at her side, his hands around Jonathan's throat, his face contorted in rage as he hurled Jonathan's skull against the wall. _No. _She would not again watch silently as he committed murder.

"I am not your wife any longer," she told him, hardly daring to speak louder than a whisper, "that is not my life anymore. I have made other vows, sworn myself to another husband. You must understand that."

He laughed. "And you think that your meek promises to your milky English husband can somehow write over the loyalty you swore to me? You will learn differently, beloved, if I have to take apart piece by piece every bit of that self you now call Mina. Do you think that impossible? Pain and will can do much, and I am well acquainted with their uses. If need be, I could make you forget the entirety of your life before this moment. And I will begin now, by renewing that bond which you have tried so assiduously to forget."

He pushed her down, working a knee between her legs, pulling her head back to bear her neck. She fought against him, feeling tears come to her eyes, gasping with effort. "You may as well be quiet," he said lightly, eyes fixed upon hers, "this is hardly the first time that you have appeased my thirst."

His teeth in her neck then, and his hand between her legs. She felt as though she would pass out with sensation and terror. The room shifted around her in her dizziness, until she could not tell whether she lay in the guest room that she shared with Jonathan, or in the bedchamber in which Vlad had joined her in his castle. Did it matter? Here she was, nonetheless, with her body beneath his and no choice but to submit. The centuries which had passed were as nothing.

He lifted his mouth from her neck, and she saw it dripping with his blood. The smell made her sick.

"Come now, Ioana. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, kin of my kin. You owe me your obedience. You shall be mine again, and this time I shall never let you go."

(But this, she knew even in her terror, was the secret - for he _had. _And her body had fallen hard against the rocks, and Ioana had died. There was no one alive now but Mina, and Mina owed obedience to no one.)

He pressed her mouth to the wound, and she drank.


End file.
